Today, July 18 2014, sees the UK release of I Am Divine, a documentary by Jeffrey Schwarz about the mother of all alt-drag icons. This is a piece I wrote about Divine for the Curzon cinemas magazine.
No one likes to be constantly identified with past glories and by the end of his life, Harris Glenn Milstead – who will be known to the ages as Divine – was bored of talking about the time he ate dog shit.
In fairness, it was a somewhat self-inflicted burden. The celebrated episode of coprophagia had been staged by Divine and filmmaker John Waters – Divine’s childhood friend from Baltimore and longtime collaborator on outrageously trashy microbudget movies – as the climax to their 1972 opus, Pink Flamingos. Shot in a single, unmistakably authentic take, it was milked for all the promotional value it was worth by the up-and-coming auteurs of trash, and it made them underground superstars.
But it wasn’t just a publicity coup. The episode stuck because it was the perfect encapsulation of Divine’s uniquely bizarre appeal: flagrant shock value delivered with off-the-wall glamour and unapologetic self-belief. It was also, in its gloriously disgusting way, ahead of its time, anticipating the urgh-factor that eventually made its way into cinemas as gross-out comedy and onto mainstream TV in shows like The Word, Jackass and I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! – not to mention look-at-me selfie culture.
But then Divine had always been a trailblazer. Tubby and camp as a child, he discovered drag parties in the 60s but eschewed the tasteful female impersonation that was the norm for outré pastiches of Liz Taylor. Developed in collaboration with Waters, the Divine persona took this further, showing off the fat rather than concealing it, creating make-up that anticipated punk and New Romantic looks, and making a point of outraging public decency wherever possible, whether by proclaiming crime an art form or being raped by a giant lobster.
The chutzpah of this huge man in drag anointing himself “the most beautiful woman in the world” was, in its own way, inspirational. And the shock tactics were, at their root, an exuberant expression of the outlaw status imposed on queers of whatever kind whether they like it or not.
The flipside of this exclusion was the weird yet warm family spirit underlying Waters films like Female Trouble (1974), Polyester (1981), in which Divine’s love interest was played by real-life former matinee idol Tab Hunter, and Hairspray (1988), which proved to be a mainstream breakthrough hit. In large part, it was Divine’s ability to express real poignancy that made the films heartwarming as well as perverted. He was widely loved in his private life too, by friends, boyfriends and, eventually, his parents.
As Jeffrey Schwarz’s documentary I Am Divine makes clear, it wasn’t all about the screen. Divine also successfully exported his persona to the stage and the dancefloor; singles like You Think You’re a Man and I’m So Beautiful were among the first techno hits. And Milstead achieved some acting success out of drag under his own name as well – a path he looked set pursue after Hairspray until his sudden death aged 42, just weeks after its release.
If defiance, glamour and iconoclasm made Divine an icon, his big heart ensured that, ultimately, his time on earth left a very good taste in the mouth.
I Am Divine is released in the UK today. More info here.
